Flying Pigs over Alexandria

Words have power—a fact that has become apparent in downtown Alexandria. In recent decades the Cenla city’s heart suffered the same decline as many a downtown district as businesses and residents moved outwards towards the suburbs. And while the city has had downtown revitalization efforts in the works for years, such projects have always had their naysayers. “At some point the phrase was uttered that ‘Downtown Alexandria would come back when pigs fly,’ ” explained Gar Pickering, marketing and communications coordinator at the Alexandria Museum of Art. “An anonymous artist started going into blighted areas and tagging vacant buildings and boarded-up windows with a flying-pig symbol.” In an only-in-Alexandria example of exquisite irony, that pig-with-wings symbol has become the icon and rallying cry for a grassroots movement for downtown revitalization, to the point where it has graduated from vacant buildings to more prominent positions, including the Alexandria Museum of Art and a starring role in an upcoming Mardi Gras parade.

Pickering, who moved to Alexandria from Natchitoches a year ago, got involved after spotting folks wearing lapel buttons featuring the iconic flying pig, accompanied by the slogan "Practice Blatant Localism." “It’s a badge of honor. If you get a pin, you’re in,” he observed, noting that the source of the pins remains somewhat shadowy because there is no official organization behind the flying pig thing. “It’s basically a sort of secret society of artists and troublemakers,” he noted, crediting much of the momentum to vocal supporter of downtown Alexandria revitalization and founder of a popular ‘Dare to be Ugly’ campaign, Eddy Lashney.

“[The flying pig] was quickly adopted by locals to show that those pigs are indeed flying, wrote Lashney in an email. “It's the identifying and uniting emblem of the scene, an icon that represents what can happen when a dedicated group of people quit saying "Someone ought to …" and starts saying "We are going to …"

For a flying pig, respectability is hard to come by when you’re the brainchild of a spray-can-wielding graffiti artist tagging vacant buildings, but according to Pickering, the image, and the movement for which it stands, are gaining traction. Not to mention visibility. In late January, the Alexandria Museum of Art invited local artists to paint a metal sculpture of a winged pig destined to be installed very much in public view outside Tamp & Grind Coffee shop, on the corner of Fourth and Desoto streets, a kind of unofficial headquarters for the downtown movement. Alongside, AMoA’s Illuminated Processions, a regular workshop that teaches people how to build tissue-paper-maché sculptures around a bamboo frame, is currently putting the finishing touches on an enormous illuminated flying pig that will star in the Pineville Light the Night Mardi Gras Parade, which rolls on Friday, January 29. Eyes on the skies, folks.